New Haven Independent

The President had just returned from laying a wreath at the Pentagon. Nearby, the Coast Guard was doing routine training exercises. Leaving aside for a moment the blinded-by-the-light stupidity of doing security exercises on 9/11, one of the exercise participants said “bang, bang, bang” into his two-way radio in order to “illustrate” shooting during the exercise.

Exactly what happened next is a little fuzzy. The best replay of events I’ve heard suggests that a producer at CNN — who could have been an intern — heard “bang, bang, bang” on a scanner, told another producer who then told someone else who tried to call the Coast Guard who didn’t respond quickly enough or at all and minutes later the world thinks that shots have been fired near the President.

All because some fella said “bang, bang, bang” into a radio. Good thing he didn’t say “the sky is falling.” The imagination reels.

With the public clamoring to know about the latest news “this instant,” some news organizations have taken to reporting first and figuring out if there is any value to the story later. CNN, MSNBC and FOX will almost gleefully provide live video of some car chase someplace. “It’s happening now” is a new paradigm. Gone is the question that used to be asked by every news editor to every reporter: “Why do I care?”

It was a simple question. If the answer wasn’t good enough the story never made it to air.

And don’t think “we’ll-just-put-it-on-and-figure-out-later-if-it-is-even-a-story-never-mind-if-we-are-right” isn’t a big problem. All news cable outlets have hours of space to fill with less people that have less experience than they did this time last year. Going “live” is an easy and relatively cheap way to fill that hole.

Which is how we get badly sourced, if sourced at all stories on the air that just turn out to be wrong. As far back as 1997, Ted Koppel, former ABC reporter and anchor of Nightline said he was concerned being “first” was becoming more important than being “right”:

“As a news consumer, I’m more interested in the quality of the information I’m receiving. Whether you’re the New York Times, or Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post, or Los Angeles Times — or whatever your particular news organization — you have to maintain your quality while you’re being faster and better than the other guy on the block. But if your competition reaches the point where you’re willing to sacrifice quality and context and completeness, I think that’s going to rear up and bite us in the ass.”

And if it sounds like I am an arrogant media elitist, well … I am. Journalists in radio, television and print spend much of their career honing their skills. This is our career and is the thing we do best, not a passing fancy. Our job is to tell you not only what we see but to draw on our experience and knowledge; a point hardly lost on Koppel:

“The main function of reporting lies in the sorting and assisting, the editing, the putting into context. Reporting is not really about, ‘Let’s see who can get the first information to the public as quickly as possible.’ It should be about, ‘Let’s see who can get the first information to the public as quickly as possible — as soon as we have had a chance to make sure the information is accurate, to weigh it against what we know, to put it in some sort of context.”

Or, as 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt put it, “Tell me a story.”